This review of Visiting Hours is a part of the second Final Girl Film Club. Check back for the third selection and join the gang.
I watched Visiting Hours with the lowest possible expectations, and it didn’t even meet those. This is perhaps the ultimate cocktease of a horror movie; a slasher film without any real urgency or suspense.
Deborah Ballin is a television reporter dedicated to advancing the rights of women to defend themselves against abusive partners, by any means necessary. Or she’s against violence in all forms. If the filmmakers themselves don’t know, I can’t see how I’m supposed to. A misogynist stalker by the name of Colt targets Deborah for her beliefs, along the way getting distracted by and killing anyone else he stumbles upon, including men. Again, if the filmmakers themselves don’t know… After surviving her first encounter with Colt, Deborah is sent to the hospital, where she insists her stalker will attempt to finish the job. Which he does. Three seperate times, between milkshake breaks. Apparently, Colt isn’t in any kind of a hurry.
The babysitter who watches over the nurse’s kids showers at her house, runs around in a towel, sleeps naked, and has a tendency to invade personal space. No explanation given, though I have a very vivid imagination.
The round-up of definicies in this film is too huge to allow me to go into any great detail. Overlong, poorly staged, an overabundance of fake scares, and with a divided emphasis on the killer and the victims that created interest in neither. Visiting Hours’ greatest crime, and easily my biggest disappointment, is the lack of vitamin Ironside. In the beginning of the film we hardly see his face, which is undeniably Ironside’s creepiest asset. But once they began showing him in full view, I realized that I was only half-right. Ironside also has one of the great screen villain voices, and with only a dozen lines of dialogue throughout the entire film the viewer is given only a fraction of what Ironside is capable of. It’s like inviting Mike to your bachelor party and forgetting to ask him for a lapdance. A complete waste of talent.
The one and only interesting aspect of Visiting Hours actually didn’t seem to be planned. Throughout the film, the protaganist is confined to her hospital bed despite her protestations. Her requests for a reason on why she isn’t allowed to leave are either ignored or greeted with vague excuses. At one point she asks the nurse, who is carting in some intesive care equipment, if the machine is to be used on her. The nurse skirts the question, delivering the non-answer “For you… or anyone else who needs it.” And when she finally insists on checking out of the hospital, sure that if she stays she will be killed by the maniac, the nurses immediately shoot her full of sedatives and strap her down for surgery.
You would think a movie which has both Michael Ironside in drag and the creepiest Canuxploitation phone call since Black Christmas would be all kinds of alright.
I may be giving the impression that the staff at the hospital are acting with sinister intent, but that isn’t the case at all, and isn’t even implied. We know from the start who the killer is and that he is working alone. The actions of the hospital staff (and in a less pronounced way, the police) are inconsequential to the story. What this does inadvertantly accomplish is the addition of that feeling of vunerability one gets in a hospital, where your life is in the hands of someone who could very well be completely incompetent. This is the case here, with well-meaning figures of authority fumbling with your safety at every turn.
And that’s what’s so frustrating about Visiting Hours. This idea of relinquishing control over our mortality to others seems to have sprung from the film without conscious thought, and if it had actually been considered and expanded upon it would have made even better use of the hospital setting. Instead we’re treated to a half-baked feminist theme that not only falters throughout but hardly made sense to begin with.
Also starring William Shatner and the guy who does the voiceovers for the Leon’s commercials. Oh Canada!
